Good drivers

One thing you realize after a few years of driving is that to drive smoothly, you need to look far: Don’t focus just on the car directly in front of you, but look further ahead on the road as far as possible. This wider view lets you spot slowdowns before brake-lights even flash, allowing you to ease off the gas and slow down smoothly. Most importantly, it helps you steer clear of obstacles without making sudden turns, maintaining your speed and ensuring a smooth ride. It’s a more peaceful way to drive.

I have tried using the same approach as a tool in leadership: instead of merely reacting to immediate situations, it’s more effective to look ahead and prepare for what’s coming. This involves understanding the decisions you need to make, their immediate consequences, and the trees of consequences that lie ahead under each decision. Listen to your team; encourage them to share their intuitions.

This not only let’s you identify the decisions that lead to compounding of problems even though they look easier in the short-term, but this also let’s you look for common sub-problems in the consequences, and plan for their solutions pro-actively and be ready with them. This approach has been useful for me.

It often requires deeply understanding the environment you’re in (architecture, and systems, including people), being aware of the immediate and nth-order consequences of your decisions, and that comes from experience.

However, I’ve recently realized something that might seem obvious to some, but for me, it’s been a bit of a journey.

When things move extremely fast, it becomes quite difficult to predict what comes next. That’s when the insight behind Abraham Lincoln’s saying really applies:

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Sometimes, it’s better to forge your own path instead of following the one others have set. Instead of trying to navigate through the decisions and consequences laid out by actions of others, create your own route.

The point at which things feel too fast and unworthy of the effort to draw decision trees can vary from person to person — their situations and perceptions. Some might find themselves naturally inclined to operate by default in a mode of create-the-future rather than trying to predict it. For me, however, embracing this approach has certainly been a journey.

Major decisions still require careful planning, like considering potential downsides. It’s important to think these through and plan for them.

But ultimately, you should focus on pursuing your vision. There are no other cars on the road; there’s maybe not even a road.